Halloween Popsicle Stick Catapult STEM Activity

“Mom! That one went the farthest I think” shouts my son. “Where’s that little tape measure? I wanna check and see!” The sound of a kid’s laugh as he flings eye balls and candy pumpkins across the room, the sound of a kid rummaging through the junk drawer looking for a measuring tape, and of course the sounds of delight when he’s right with his measurements. This was our morning enjoying a Halloween popsicle stick catapult STEM activity and a simple STEM project to explore measurement, science, and engineering with a tray full of goodies.

HALLOWEEN POPSICLE STICK CATAPULT STEM ACTIVITY

Join us in making this super easy Halloween themed popsicle stick catapult for a cool Halloween STEM activity. It’s perfect for our 31 Days of Halloween STEM Countdown! Just a few simple materials and you can set up a super simple experiment and afternoon activity for the kids.

EASY HALLOWEEN CATAPULT

Our original popsicle stick catapult is always popular all year round so why not make it a little more spooky or creepy for Halloween hands-on learning. This is a great way to combine play, engineering, science, and math with just a few supplies you probably already have.

HOW TO MAKE HALLOWEEN POPSICLE STICK CATAPULT

Start by securing 8 jumbo craft sticks together at the ends with rubber bands. The bands should be wound tightly. I always save the rubber bands that come off our produce! Great item to add to the junk drawer. You can find science just about anywhere.

You will then take one stick and wedge it into the stack just above the bottom stick. Make sure to center it in the stack. Place the remaining craft stick on the top of the stack in line with the one you just added.

Secure the tips together with a looser rubber band. It needs to have some give to get a good launch going. Grab your launching items and get started!

Use a glue gun or other strong glue {adult help please} to add a bottle cap to the top of the catapult. This will really help secure your object prior to take off. Though it is optional but you may need to find alternative items that won’t roll off.

CATAPULT SCIENCE EXPERIMENT

You can easily set up an experiment by testing different weighted items to see which ones fly farther. Adding a measuring tape encourages simple math concepts that my 2nd grader is just really starting to explore.

Always start out asking a question to come up with a hypothesis. Which item will go farther? I think ______ will go farther. Why? Have fun setting up a catapult to test the theory! Can you design a different catapult?

This is an awesome way to reinforce what he is learning with a super fun activity. Additionally, you can encourage older kids to record the data from measuring all the launches.

Have your kids fire each material {such as a candy pumpkin, plastic spider or eyeball} 10 times and record the distance each time. What kinds of conclusions can they draw from the information gathered? Which item worked the best? Which item didn’t work well at all.

You can also test out the amount of popsicle sticks used in the stack to create the tension need to launch the catapult. How about 6 or 10! What are the differences when tested?

CATAPULT SCIENCE INFORMATION

First off this is a great simple physics activity for kids of multiple ages. What is there to explore that has to do with physics? Let’s start with energy including elastic potential energy. You can also learn about projectile motion.

You can talk about stored energy or potential elastic energy as you pull back on the popsicle stick, bending it. When you release the stick all that potential energy is released into energy in motion producing the projectile motion.

A catapult is a simple machine that has been around for ages. Have your kids dig up a little history and research when the first catapults were invented and used! Hint check out the 17th century!

There you have it! A full afternoon or morning of learning and play with some popsicle sticks and rubber bands. Who would have thought you could incorporate science, engineering, math, and even history into such a playful activity.

Challenge your kids to come up with a cool theme for each of the holidays and find holiday-themed items to test and experiment with. Here’s our Christmas catapult!

A Halloween popsicle stick catapult STEM activity is perfect for STEM on a budget anytime of the year.

Check out more awesome Halloween science ideas this season. Click on the pictures below or visit Halloween Science here.

Looking for easy to print activities, and inexpensive problem-based challenges?